A History of the Khoikhoi of Southern Africa

The Cape Herders provides the first comprehensive picture of the Khoikhoi people. In doing so, it fills a long-standing gap in the resources of Southern African studies, and at a time when interest in the indigenous populations of South Africa is growing daily.…

Mozambique Since Independence

Confronting Leviathan describes Mozambique’s attempt to construct a socialist society in one African country on the back of an anti-colonial struggle for national independence. In explaining the failure of this effort the authors suggest reasons why the socialist vision of the ruling party, Frelimo, lacked resonance with Mozambican society.…

Thomas Rodney's 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Thomas Rodney as a land commissioner and a territorial judge in the newly formed Mississippi Territory. Rodney’s edited and annotated journal, presented in complete form for the first time, is both a travel adventure and a colorful glimpse into the life of his day.

The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948 to 1994

Forty Lost Years is a penetrating analysis of the rise and demise of the National Party’s long and violent rule in South Africa. Building on the author’s earlier study of Afrikaner nationalism (Volkskapitalisme), this pioneering new work is the first attempt to explain the ongoing conflicts inside the National Party in the context of the broader political struggles in and around the apartheid state.…

John Lonsdale says in his introduction:
“This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau ‘Emergency’ in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.…

There have been institutions of higher learning for centuries in Africa, but the phenomenal growth has taken place in the last fifty years, first in the later days of colonialism and then in the heady days of independence and commodity boom.…

Change and Development in an Informal Economy, 1970–1995

Kenya was where the term “informal sector” was first used in 1971. During the 1980s the term “jua kali”—in Swahili “hot sun”—came to be used of the informal sector artisans, such as carworkers and metalworkers, who were working under the hot sun because of a lack of premises.…

Seekers of El Dorado

One of the most persistent legends in the annals of New World exploration is that of the Land of God. Its mythical site was located over vast areas of South American (and later, North America); it drove some men mad with greed and, often as not, to their deaths.…

A Dutch Family in Japanese Java

Eldest daughter of eight children, the author grew up in Surakarta, Java, in what is now Indonesia. In the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, Dutch nationals were rounded up by Japanese soldiers and put in internment camps.…

Robert Silverberg, whose work is well known to science fiction fans, originally published The Realm of Prester John in 1972. The first modern account of the genesis of a great medieval myth—which was perpetuated for centuries by European Christians who looked to Asia and Africa for a strong ruler out of the east—Silverberg's romantic and fabulous tale is now available in paperback for the first time.…

Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania

Farming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history.…

The Case of Tanganyika, 1850–1950

This pioneering book was one of the first to place the history of East Africa within the context of the environment. It has been used continuously for student teaching. It is now reissued with an introduction placing it within the debate that has developed on the subject; there is also an updated bibliography.…

Life in a Post-Apartheid Township in Namibia

Katutura, located in Namibia’s major urban center and capital, Windhoek, was a township created by apartheid, and administered in the past by the most rigid machinery of the apartheid era. Namibia became a sovereign state in 1990, and Katutura reflects many of the changes that have taken place.…

A Historical Interpretation

Carlos Guevara Mann argues that Panamanian militarism, a consequence of the breakdown of legitimacy that occurred in the early nineteenth century, is more a manifestation of a deeply-rooted political tradition than an isolated phenomenon of the late twentieth century.…

This bold, popularizing synthesis presents a readily accessible introduction to one of the major themes of twentieth-century world history. Between 1922, when self-government was restored to Egypt, and 1994, when nonracial democracy was achieved in South Africa, 54 new nations were established in Africa.…

The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede

When a group of young political activists met in 1944 to launch the African National Congress Youth League, it included the nucleus of a remarkable generation of leaders who forged the struggle for freedom and equality in South Africa for the next half century: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Jordan Ngubane, Ellen Kuzwayo, Albertina Smith, A.…

Essays on the Akan & the Kingdom of Asante

The Asante had unique conceptions of time and motion, and the relationships between the unborn, the living and the dead. This study suggests that awareness of their past has much to do with the survival of their culture in this century.…

The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960

Violence and the Dream People is an account of a little-known struggle by the Malayan government and the communist guerrillas, during the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency, to win the allegiance of the Orang Asli, the indigenous people of the peninsular Malaya.…